The invention is directed to the field of load bearing stands, and, more particularly, to a stand suitable for supporting a tree.
Tree stands for supporting trees such as Christmas trees and the like have been known for many years. Such stands have often been constructed of metals, and consequently have been relatively heavy and cumbersome. Lighter materials such as plastics have recently been substituted for metals. Although these lighter materials have generally reduced the weight of the stands and their production cost, they have generally also made the tree stands less sturdy.
The known tree stands have also been provided with detachable legs which are removable for storage and shipping purposes. The detachable legs have not proven fully satisfactory, however, due to the poor connections between the legs and the base portion of the tree stand, which have caused the base portion and, thus, the supported tree, to be tilted relative to the supporting surface. To compensate for this problem, users have placed shims about the tree trunk to maintain the tree in a vertical, yet unstable, orientation. But this has been an inadequate solution due to the effort and frustration associated with adjusting the tree, and the unstableness of the tree's adjusted position.
A further disadvantage of the known tree stands has been their limited versatility and adjustability with regard to supporting different tree trunk diameters. Tree stands have been known for supporting fixed sized trunks, such as for artificial trees. Other tree stands; have provided adjustability of the size of the trunk receiving opening. Such stands have included, for example, radially adjustable screws to engage the tree trunk. Such adjusting elements have proven inefficient because more than one person is frequently needed to balance the tree and simultaneously adjust the screws.